The Albany Poetry Workshop
Forum I: Poem for the End of the Century
Abeccedary
Now, with vowels flung down
the river of language,
we write to one another
as we leave the second half
of the second millennium.
We celebrate the alphabet,
our old mare,
who has carried us here,
who stands beside us
on the riverbank, with reed pen
and clay tablet, with painted figure
and chiseled stone, (where perhaps
the serif began as a stroke
chipped in to finish the main stroke).
Now, as we fling ourselves
or are flung to the next era of language,
we look back on words we have written,
don our priestly robes or sackcloth,
and to that workhorse of ideas,
we wish a happy birthday.
7 September 96
Copyright © by Scott Reid